Some LAUSD Employees to Get 9% Increase; Teachers Want 17.6%

12 Jun 2014

The teachers of the Los Angeles Unified School District are not satisfied with the raise offered them by the Los Angeles Unified school board, which approved pay raises for its employees on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

The board offered the teachers a 2 percent raise, which would cost the district about $53.7 million, but the teachers’ union is demanding a whopping 17.6 percent raise, as union leaders called the board’s offer an “insult” at a rally outside the headquarters of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) in early June.

If the union gets its way, the cost to the district would be an extra $472 million per year.

The school board is offering a salary increase of 1.2 percent for construction workers, 7 percent for clerical workers and members of the California School Employees Association and 9 percent for sworn school police officers.

All of the raises are to compensate workers for the substantial funds they are paying into the state pension system, funds that new state laws necessitate because the school districts are not allowed to contribute to the employees’ pension contributions.